(CNN) - Barack Obama is targeting a John McCain advisor's former compensation as a Fortune 500 CEO in a new television ad running nationally.

The 30-second spot goes after executive pay and is specifically critical of Carly Fiorina, the current McCain advisor who was ousted as the head of Hewlett-Packard in 2005. The company doled out $21 million in severance to her, and reportedly another $21 million worth of stock and pension.

The ad, called "Parachute," also attacks Washington Mutual CEO Alan Fishman, who reportedly could get $19 million worth of compensation, even though the bank failed last week.

"You've got corporate executives who are giving themselves million dollar golden parachutes and leaving workers high and dry," Obama says in the ad. "That's wrong. It's an outrage."

Fiorina had been a prominent surrogate for McCain, but she was promptly removed from the cable news circuit earlier this month after she said neither John McCain no Sarah Palin was qualified to run a major corporation.

The economy is the No. 1 issue on the minds of voters, polls show, and both candidates are trying to convince voters that they will do a better job of getting the financial crisis under control.

"Two times, on March 14, 2008, and June 4, 2008, in the Democratic budget resolution, he voted to raise taxes on people making just $42,000 per year. He even said at the time that this vote for higher taxes on the middle class was 'getting our nation's priorities back on track,' " McCain said at a rally in Columbus, Ohio.

MEMPHIS, Tennessee (CNN)– There is undoubtedly someone out there somewhere who watched last week’s debate in Mississippi between John McCain and Barack Obama and who came away from the debate tossing his or her preferred candidate over the railing, and warmly embracing the candidate he or she previously rejected.

We haven’t been able to find that person.

Granted, we haven’t been conducting official polls, which have been shifting; we’ve just been talking with people as we roll across the country in the bus. But for all the effort the Commission on Presidential Debates put into the first 90-minute confrontation last week, everyone with whom we’ve spoken who watched the debate came away ready to vote for the same candidate he or she liked in the first place.

Click below for a snapshot, from the back room at Marlowe’s Ribs, located at 4381 Elvis Presley Boulevard in Memphis, just down the road from the former home of the man in whose honor the street is named.

(CNN) - As some prominent conservatives begin to raise the question of whether Sarah Palin should remain on the Republican presidential ticket – and others call for her to be given more public exposure in a bid to reverse falling poll numbers – the McCain campaign is bringing the Alaska governor to John McCain’s Sedona ranch for several days of intense debate prep.

Senior campaign advisor Steve Schmidt and other top officials met Palin in Philadelphia Sunday night, and are traveling with her and McCain to a Columbus, Ohio event Monday morning. The group then heads to Arizona.

The original plan was for Palin to prepare in St. Louis, where the vice presidential debate will be held Thursday. Instead, she has already been preparing in a Philadelphia hotel for four days with advisors. She will now get ready for the debate at McCain’s rustic creek-side home - what a top aide calls "debate camp."

The aide, who's part of the team prepping Palin, tells CNN they decided to take her to debate camp there because it is an "invigorating and enjoyable place to prepare for Thursday."

"SP [Sarah Palin] loves it, and has her kids and Todd coming," wrote the aide in an e-mail, and that "John McCain himself came up with the idea.”

Late last week, in the wake of a widely-panned interview with Katie Couric of CBS News, some prominent conservatives who had supported Palin’s vice presidential bid, including National Review columnist Kathleen Parker, suggested she step down before the election.

The Statement:At a presidential debate Friday, Sept. 26, in Oxford, Mississippi, Republican nominee Sen. John McCain repeated his campaign trail charge that Democratic rival Sen. Barack Obama tried to cut off money to the military. "And Senator Obama ... after promising not to vote to cut off funds for the troops, did the incredible thing of voting to cut off the funds for the troops in Iraq and Afghanistan," McCain said.
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(CNN)—After working around the clock and through the weekend, Congress and lawmakers came to an agreement on a $700 billion financial bailout deal. In the latest installment of CNN=Politics Daily, CNN’s Brianna Keilar has the details on the plan and what it will take for Congress to pass the bill.

Meanwhile, after their first face-off, John McCain and Barack Obama are hitting the campaign trail and targeting some key states. CNN’s Dana Bash reports on McCain’s efforts in Ohio and Iowa, while CNN’s Suzanne Malveaux has the details on Obama’s weekend campaigning in Michigan, North Carolina and Virginia, ending up today in Colorado.

Finally: After a few difficult interviews, Sarah Palin was the star of Saturday Night Live for the second time - but some conservatives aren’t laughing. CNN’s Carol Costello reports.

(CNN)– Former President Bill Clinton was hesitant to characterize Barack Obama as a "great man" Sunday, a phrase he had no qualms using last week to describe Obama's rival John McCain.

Clinton told NBC's Tom Brokaw that it was only earlier this month in Harlem that he and Obama had their "first conversation." He said he had spoken with Obama before, but only in passing.

Clinton then explained what he meant in characterizing McCain as a "great man."

"I think his greatness is that he keeps trying to come back to service without ever asking people to cut him any slack or feel sorry for him or any of that stuff because he was a POW," Clinton said of the Republican presidential nominee.

Clinton, who successfully ran his own 1992 presidential campaign on the now commonly used phrase "it's the economy, stupid," said that he believed the current economic crisis "left [Obama] in a position of leadership that he's now in."

Clinton said he thought Obama "saw and imagined" how the economic situation could develop.

"And I think that the rest of us should admire that. That's a big part of leadership, being able to sense, as well as see the future," he said.

Clinton said he and Obama are developing a "really good relationship," and the Democratic nominee has the potential for greatness. Explaining, he said Obama has many personal accomplishments, but none that exemplify his greatness to the country.

"When he becomes president, he'll be doing things for the American people and for the world and he is-and the greatness will then become apparent because of the good he'll do...That's what I very much believe is going to happen."

WILMINGTON, Delaware (CNN) – As Joe Biden settles into debate prep mode this week ahead of Thursday night’s debate in St. Louis, campaign aides are actively playing up Sarah Palin’s debating skills. Biden’s spokesman called Palin “a leviathan of forensics,” a classic example of the campaign tactic of raising the expectations of their opponent and lowering their own.

“She's very skilled and she'll be well-prepared,” said Barack Obama’s chief strategist David Axelrod Sunday night, flying with Biden back to Delaware to help him get ready.

“As you saw at the convention she can be very good. So, I think it would be foolish to assume that this isn’t going to be a really challenging debate. We're preparing for that, on that assumption.”

Taking it one step farther, Biden spokesman David Wade later added, “He's going in here to debate a leviathan of forensics, who has debated five times and she's undefeated.”

Biden has a difficult task on his hands – not coming across as condescending with his decades of experience and not adopting a tone that could appear as though he’s treating Palin differently because she’s a woman.

“I think Governor Palin is a skilled politician,” said Axelrod. “She got elected in a very tough political arena against tough opponents and we're going to treat her with the respect that she deserves. And I think that she would expect that, I think voters should expect that.”